Research Team: Efthymios Kaltsounas, Tonia Karaoglou, Natalie Minioti
Principal Investigator: Eleni Papazoglou, Associate Professor
June 2018 – February 2020
The research project explored the reception of Antiquity in Greece from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s (from the ‘Metapolitefsi’/Change of Regime to the ‘Macedonian Question’). Its main focus was on the journalistic and critical reception of the performances of ancient drama, which in this period are multiplying, attracting mass audiences. Performances and newspaper/magazine publications decisively shape and, in turn, reflect the common imaginings of Antiquity in the modern Greek collective consciousness, the communal convictions and expectations about what has been authorized as ‘tragic’ and ‘Greek’ – a sort of ‘Communal Hellenism’.
The research team collected and digitized theatrical reviews and other articles related to ancient drama performances, that appeared in the Greek Press during the period in question. The digitized material is accessible in a Free Access Database (http://www.thea.auth.gr/koinochristi-archaiognosia-db/).
In the period in question, the invocation of Antiquity as a component of national political and cultural identity is instrumental to the complex negotiation of Greece’s identity between West and East, Europhilia and anti-europeanism, cosmopolitan integration and ‘fear of de-Hellenization’ (aphellinismos), before and after the country’s accession to what was then European Economic Community (EEC).
The tensions observed are directly reflected in the production of ancient drama performances. Next to and in parallel with the neoclassical performances, which continue to attract large audiences, others appear that make ample use of Greek folklore cultural codes, at first experimentally, but soon also in productions at the ‘institutional’ Epidauria. At first through neoclassicism, then through folklore, this artistic phenomenon was seen as documenting a diachronic and essentially political modern Greek desideratum: continuity with the ancient past. At the same time, however,
The press reception of performances, apart from being a productive vehicle for the study of the productions as such, provides indispensable indexes to audience reception. Through the study of theatre reviews, we explored the crucial shifts registered in the definition of Greekness and its dynamic connections to Antiquity.
Read more at: Efthymios Kaltsounas, Tonia Karaoglou, Natalie Minioti and Eleni Papazoglou, «‘Communal Hellenism’ and Ancient Tragedy Performances in Greece (1975-1995): The Ritual Quest», Journal of Greek Media and Culture, vol. 7, no. 1 (2021), pp. 69–103.
